6 Putting on the Heart of Christ
to deal immediately with the creature and the creature with its Creator and Lord. (Sp. Ex. 15) God does touch the individual soul through thoughts, desires, imaginings, and all the feelings that go on inside of a person. The director is there only to facilitate that conversation between God and the person making the Exercises. The director does not give advice or teach them, but only facilitates the personal encounter of that person with God. The Spiritual Exercises are about the encounter with God and meeting God in a very personal way.
What Others Say about the Exercises Over the years, two schools of thought about the purpose of the Exercises have emerged. George Aschenbrenner calls them “Electionists” and “Perfectionists.” The Electionists see the goal of the Exercises as “making a wise choice of a state of life in which to serve God best.” The Perfectionists see the goal as “a union with God most intimate and total.”2 Ignatius envisioned the Spiritual Exercises as a means to overcome ourselves, to order our lives, so we could reach an ordered decision. He saw it as a process of coming to a major life decision. To make such a decision, we must come to a level of freedom so choices can be made out of ordered affections. Put another way, the Exercises help us discover our role in the plan of salvation—God’s will for us. We should ask what is God calling me to do in my life and how do I fit into God’s plan of salvation of the world?